EU review teams will continue to visit Ireland to monitor economic performance for a number of years after Ireland exits the bailout programme, it has emerged.

Regular missions will continue until 75 per cent of the money borrowed from the EU under the bailout programme is repaid, under a draft regulation being finalised, according to the Minister for Finance, Michael Noonan.

I discussed this trope about ‘regaining sovereignty’ last week and how it was – in the context of parties adhering to the orthodoxy – a chimera. And this confirms it. We will, if the government’s plans actually work ( a big if, and it will be interesting to see how the latest news impacts on that ) see an exit, but that exit will be constrained by limitations placed by the ECB and EU. Indeed the thrust of socio-economic policy will remain part and parcel of the troika dispensation for years to come. So it further raises the question as to what meaning ‘economic sovereignty’ actually has in this context.

The freedom to take economic decisions as long as they accord with the approaches laid down long before by the EU/ECB and IMF? Some freedom.

The Government was supported by Fianna Fáil in both Houses, as well as by a small number of independent TDs and Senators.

From FF’s perspective they must be hoping it all works out because otherwise…

And just who were those Independent TDs? Grealish presumably and who else?

Meanwhile…

The debate in the Seanad commenced at about 3am and was completed a little after 5.40am when the upper house approved the legislation by 37 votes to six. Along with three Sinn Féin senators, independent senators John Crown and Sean Barrett voted against, as did the Labour senator James Heffernan, who had already relinquished the party whip.

Like this:

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The reason money flows into a country is the expectation that larger amounts will flow out. Long before the troika arrived the policy of successive Irish governments has been to create a political, social and economic environment friendly to international capital and its domestic facilitators. ‘Returning to economic sovereignty’ means the further placating of international capital, the increased extraction of surplus value, and the further weakening of the prospect of any kind of independent, pro-worker policy. Its as self-contradictory and deceptive as that other euphemism, much used by conventional economists, ‘returning to sustainability';

“Incapable on account of their social peculiarities of unfying the country, of assuring its independence, of resolving the agrarian question, this bourgeoisie of compradors, unable to play any progressive role in history, kept the country in chaos and prostration.”

I think it is necessary to be a bit careful with the use of “we” about this.

I note that following from Enda Kenny’s speech to the Dail:

“We are now a poorer but, perhaps, wiser people from the lessons we have learned” – in reference to the economic turmoil of the past few years.

Actually that is not the case – as he well knows.

While working people who make up the vast bulk of the population are indeed much poorer the reality is that the capitalists who run this society are in fact much better off.

The Sunday Independent “Rich List” of March 2012 detailed how the 300 richest people in Ireland increased their wealth from €50 billion in 2010 to €62 billion in 2012 – an increase of 25% . And we can assume that when next months 2013 list comes out there will have been another hefty increase for these parasites.

And if Enda Kenny can lie about a detail like that then I think it is clear that any suggestions that this emergency bank legislation is about alleviating the financial burden on the “we” that is all the people in Ireland is also a lie.